Urban Village

People are flooding into this city, and they’re not all Bangladeshi slum-dwellers.What makes this influx interesting is that they’ve retained their cultural markerswhile assimilating Delhi’s own. Their languages, their cuisines, their festivals;they all tug Delhi in different directions, turning a creamy homogenous maa ki daal into amuch more heterogenous stew. More to the point, Delhi isn’t complaining. What couldbe more cosmopolitan than that?

We can’t give you a listing of all the tribes, of course, and where they hang out,or even how to recognise them. But we’ve taken a few at random, and where to observethem in their natural habitat. The thing is to bring your open mind, in some cases yourappetite, and a sense of curiosity. You’ll be surprised at what you find.

A Large Tribe: The Bengalis

The Bengalis form one of the largest non-Punjabi groups of the city. There is even aBengali Club in the Old City, which points to the fact that there were Bengalis in Delhibefore Independence, holding down jobs as lawyers, doctors, clerks and higher levelofficers in the central bureaucracy. Independence, or rather Partition, sparked thebiggest wave of Bengali migration to New Delhi. Chittaranjan Park started life as EastPakistan Displaced Peoples’ Colony, or EPDP colony for short. The area was zoned forplots that were apportioned to refugee-migrants. What that means is that the core of C.R.Park was, and remains, East Bengali. The fact that C.R. Park still continues to be such ahotbed of Bengali influence points to two things: one, that the Bengalis love their rootsand lay them deep, wherever they are, and two, if you’re looking for Bengali cultureor, more prosaically, Bengali sweets, this is a good place to start. A great many of the‘dyed in the wool’ Bongs one meets are actually born and brought up in Delhi.This in itself points to two further things: the resilience of Bengali culture, and thefact that Delhi’s soil isn’t quite as inhospitable to other influence as it isgenerally thought to be.

As any Bengali will tell you, the community loves to eat, talk, organise, fight andpray—soccer in Calcutta of course covers all these options—and they also love toculture it up. There are over 600 Durga Pujas every year in the NCR, and each one withfeasting, prayer, and all the cultural paraphernalia the Bengalis love to surroundthemselves with. That means dance, music, theatre of all sorts, and pandals that range theentire aesthetic and political spectrum. Most of this is open to the public.

Markets 1 and 2 in C.R. Park are great places to saunter around at any time. While youwander and eat daal-puris and dhakai parathas and puchkas and the gobhi-filled shingharas,or shop for hilsa or mutton chops or tele bhaja, you’ll be listening to thesounds of Bengalis all around you, animatedly discussing the issues of the day. The BabuMoshai restaurant (K-1/52, Chittaranjan Park, 26275220, 26274327) is fully good enough forthe average non-Bengali to get a taste for the cuisine. Annapurna Sweets (the one atCommunity Centre, Yusuf Sarai, not the pale imitations in C.R. Park) is a good place toget mishti as is the venerable Annapurna Mishtan Bhandar in Chandni Chowk (near Shish GanjGurudwara, 23962050, 23862109; branch at P 37-38, Pandav Nagar, Mayur Vihar I, 22759945).Aficionados swear by the kancha golla at the Chandni Chowk shop, which has beenrunning since 1929.

The other time to see Bengalis revving it up is on and around the 8th of May, the birthanniversary of the uber-Bong, Rabindranath Tagore. Then the fervour knows no bounds. Thereare workshops and seminars and recitals of Rabindra Sangeet by school troupes and by moreaccomplished groups. Uttarayan, a large membership-based organisation—and also thename of the old boy’s home in Santiniketan—organises a real jamboree of Bengaliculture around that time, including an evening of Rabindra Sangeet at Kamani Auditorium.The level of musicianship is very high indeed, and the enthusiasm of the many groupsinvolved infectious. Call Uttarayan for details (Sanjoy Sarkar, secretary, 26167159; AshisMukherjee, president, 26537355). The Bengal Association on 3 Hailey Road is a goodresource (23327431); their monthly newsletter is a mine of info. If you can, speak toBadal Roy or Amaresh Ganguli.

And A Small One: The Mizos

At the other end of the spectrum are the Mizos. Though a well-organised and well-knitcommunity, its small size makes it hard to get a handle on. As with other Northeasterncommunities, the Mizos came to Delhi for two things: the government and education.Employment in the Northeast is sparse. Now, with the burgeoning of the service industryand IT spinoffs like the BPOs, more and more kids are staying on after they get theireducations. This has come as a boon for many Mizos who miss home but know that jobprospects back home are extremely limited.

The cohesive nature of the Mizos lends itself to close organisation. In Delhi they wereorganised first by the Mizo Student’s Union. The Mizo Christian Fellowship and theWelfare Association followed. Any self-avowed Mizo can join, for a small membership fee.They meet every Sunday at 4pm for a Mizo service at the Free Church in Green Park. Theservice is non-denominational, and it also serves as a convenient place for everyone tohear about births and deaths and other community stuff. Parties are arranged,get-togethers planned; the nitty-gritty of living in a place far from home, for examplethe transport of mortal remains back to Mizoram, is arranged and paid for.

Their roots are strong, as is their faith, and they affirm these whenever they meet.However, unlike the Bengalis, the Mizo community is hard to get a feel for, if you’renot a part of them. This is not due to any intransigence on their part. Some of it is dueto pure ignorance on the part of Dilliwallahs; Mizos are sick of being thought of asNagas, or Nepalis, or even Thai.
Their food is hard to come by and no, a momo at their Dilli Haat stall does not qualify asMizo food. Tracking Mizo food down in Delhi, if you’re not friends with a Mizo, ispractically impossible.

But don’t despair. At the time of the Kut, their harvest festival, which they tryand arrange around the time of the Dussehra break, they try and get everyone under oneroof or one lawn and then they have the works. Recitations and debates for the childrenand young adults, costumes and quizzes and games and sports and food; music and theatreand, if affordable, a live band or two in the evening, where the formidable musicianshipof the Mizos can be viewed. Music is a way of life for them, and many of them already playin bands around the country. All this is arranged purely on the back of the membershipfees people pay, and space is at a premium, but if you can wangle an invitation, go take alook.

Community sites: www.delhimizo. org (practically entirely in Mizo, so of limitedutility) and www.dmzp.org (English in parts, so more accessible. DMZP stands for DelhiMizo Zirlai Pawl, or the Delhi Mizo Student’s Union).

And One In The Moddle: The Telugu

Though not as well-known as the Tamil community and not as well networked as theMalayalis, Delhi’s Telugu population has not lagged too far behind. The Delhi TeluguSangham estimates that there are half a million Telugu people here, and they all takebeing Telugu seriously. In fact, so focused are they on their own culture, high, pop, andotherwise, that when Chiranjeevi’s movie Tagore was released here, the fansgot out their musical instruments and cheered outside the theatres.

The Telugu influx started before Independence, mostly in the Central governmentservices. G. Sai Krishna Rao, the general secretary of the Telugu Sangham, estimates thathalf of the 500,000 Telugus in Delhi may actually have been born and brought up righthere.

That doesn’t gloss over their roots, though. The culture is an old one, and itconstantly reinforces itself. The first settlements were in West Delhi, in Karol Bagh andPatel Nagar. These would have been in central government housing schemes; as these werebought into by outsiders, their occupants moved, to Janakpuri and R.K. Puram, to Noida andmost recently, to Dwarka. What remains constant is that the Telugus stick close to eachother.

Cultural troupes are brought up from AP. These are open by invitation to non-Andhrapeople as well and tickets are advertised. A popular community activity is the KarthikaMasam—the end of Karthik—when the practise of the Vana Bhojanam, literallyeating out under the trees, leads to giant open-air picnics. Cooks are brought in from AP,and entire families take Talkatora Garden, Lodi Garden or other green spaces over for theannual cookout.

But the Telugu people don’t only eat under trees; if you’re after good Andhrafood, look no farther than Andhra Pradesh Bhavan (1, Ashoka Road, 23382031). The mealshere are quick, clean, affordable, and very good indeed, and you can get non-veg food aswell. If you’re a vegetarian, Balaji Hotel on Gurudwara Road and Southern Hotel onArya Samaj Road, both in Karol Bagh, are good choices for authentic Andhra food. SouthernSuper Bazaar on Arya Samaj Road stocks essential ingredients, including seasonalvegetables, and makes for an engaging wander. There are branches in Janakpuri and Gurgaon.Rama Stores Munirka is another South Indian landmark, though that one is much morepan-South Indian, with a little bit of everything.

The Andhra Education Society runs six schools in Delhi, though you don’t have tobe Telugu (or Telengana) to be admitted. Sri Venkateswara College is similarly set up. TheDelhi Andhra Association on Lodi Road serves as another fulcrum for the community.

Being a religious bunch, temples naturally play their role in the community, though,interestingly, they worship at the other South Indian temples in Delhi, and don’thave one exclusively associated with them. Malai Mandir and the Ayyappa Mandir in R.K.Puram, Vinayak Temple in Sarojini Nagar, etc; the Telugu contingent worship at them all.

So there it is. Three tribes of Delhi, one huge, one tiny, one in between. The factthat they are far from home hasn’t stopped them from making themselves at home. ThePunjabis don’t seem to mind; they like the food, at any rate, and discovery canalways start with that. Take a look at your city, or even around your place or work orstudy. There’s more to it than meets the eye.

With inputs from Muneeza Naqvi and Pallavi Srivastava

This piece originally appeared in the second sample issue of Delhi City Limits